Some Russian prisoners of war do not want to be exchanged, - Deputy Minister of Justice Pikalov
Some prisoners of war of the Russian army do not want to go for an exchange, as they understand that after that the Russians will send them back to the front line.
This was stated by Deputy Minister of Justice Yevhen Pikalov in an interview with Censor.NET.
"Some of the prisoners do not want to be exchanged. Especially not the citizens of the Russian Federation who come here to fight and get captured.
We had cases when, with the permission of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, journalists interviewed such people, and they told us that they had three meals a day, paid work, and medical support here. But they didn't have all this at home," he said.
"They don't want to go there, because there is only one way to go - you are returned to the trench again," Pikalov added.
The deputy minister noted that from the first days of the full-scale invasion, prisoners of war began to arrive, so it was decided that the penitentiary system would take care of them.
"That is, it was necessary to adapt the institutions very quickly, set up camps for prisoners of war, establish this work and regulate all processes, issue new orders and instructions that did not exist before. All this has been done and is working. And it works quite well. I have recently been in Geneva, where the national report on torture was considered at a meeting of the UN Committee against Torture. The members of the Committee also recognise that Ukraine, unlike Russia, quite clearly adheres to all international conventions and obligations. This is also, in my opinion, a merit of the SCES," Pikalov said.
Read the full text of the interview with Deputy Minister of Justice Yevhen Pikalov for Censor.NET here.
